Match Stats
- UC San Diego def. #13 CSUN 3-0, (27-25, 25-13, 25-14)
- UCSD improves to 5-5, while CSUN falls to 9-4
- Hosted by CSUN
UC San Deigo wins their fifth consecutive straight set victory with win over #13 CSUN.
Tanner Sytestad led the way for UCSD with 14 kills on a .571 hitting percentage and three blocks. Setter Milosh Stojcic dished out 31 assists and six digs.
For CSUN, Dimitar Kalchev and Arvis Greene each put down 10 kills.
Press Release
Courtesy of UC San Diego Athletics
The University of California San Diego pulled out a close opening frame before blitzing No. 13 CSUN in a straight-set victory in Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) men’s volleyball action inside RIMAC Arena on Wednesday night. Set scores were 27-25, 25-13 and 25-14.
The result extended this remarkable streak by UC San Diego now to five straight wins. The Tritons have evened their overall record at 5-5 after beginning the season with five successive losses. They are 2-4 in the MPSF. CSUN, which entered as a winner of three straight, fell to 9-4 overall and an identical 2-4 in league play.
This is the first five-match win streak for UCSD since March 9-31, 2012, with all of those successes in MPSF action. Wednesday also meant a first triumph for the Tritons against a nationally-ranked opponent since a five-set decision at No. 14 USC on March 16, 2013.
Junior opposite and tri-captain Tanner Syftestad posted the match high in kills for a sixth consecutive contest, with 14. He had 20-plus kills in each of his previous five outings, but simply ran out of volleyball on Wednesday in a dominant, and quick, 82-minute effort by UCSD for its first sweep of 2017. Syftestad hit a season-high .571 (14-2-21) and added a season-high four aces to equal his single-match career best, as well as three digs and three total blocks.
Junior setter Milosh Stojcic finished with 31 assists while directing the Triton offense to a season-best .516 (39-7-62) hitting percentage, including .692 (10-1-13) in the second and .737 (15-1-19) in the third. They opened game three with nine kills on 10 swings without an error (.900) as CSUN exhausted both timeouts, trailing 13-7. Stojcic also had three kills on three attempts, with six digs and a block assist.
Senior outside hitter Ian Colbert contributed eight kills and five digs, while fellow starters Bryan Zhu (7-1-8, .750), Xander Jimenez (5-1-8, .500) and Drew Sloane (2-0-4, .500) were efficient on the attack. Sloane led all players with four total blocks.
UCSD served eight aces without allowing a single one in return, and came up with 7.0 total team blocks to just 3.0 by the Matadors.
The tight first game saw 11 tie scores and five lead changes. On the Tritons’ fourth set point, Colbert sent a tough serve over the net that the Matadors ultimately just could not deal with. Earlier, a 4-0 run consisted of a Syftestad kill and three of his own service points, the latter two on back-to-back aces, as CSUN had to call its first timeout down 16-13. A Stojcic dump made it 19-15 for the Matadors’ second timeout. Syftestad later found the back left corner for a kill at 22-20, and the Tritons expertly saw the frame out despite ties at 24-24 and 25-25, both of which also happened to be broken by Syftestad kills.
It was all UC San Diego the rest of the night. The Tritons took leads of 3-1 and 5-3 on big solo stuffs by Sloane and Syftestad. Syftestad and Zhu then partnered up on a combination block for 8-3 coming out of CSUN’s first timeout, and Sloane’s lone ace made it 9-3 to round out a six-point run. Another stuff block by Syftestad and Zhu, followed by an awry attack, had the Matadors burning their second timeout at 11-4.
UCSD gradually broke the third and final set wide open as well. Syftestad powered a kill off the opposing block for 7-5. Jimenez then laid claim to a clever and somewhat-fortuitous dig that he barely even saw, to keep a rally alive for a Matador attack error and 10-6. When Syftestad slammed down the overpass off of a Jimenez serve, it was 12-7. A second successive kill caused what would prove to be CSUN’s final timeout of the evening. Out of that, an ace by Jimenez ended a 4-0 stretch that made it 14-7, and the drama was all but over.
Arvis Greene, Jr., and Dimitar Kalchev had 10 kills apiece for CSUN. Kalchev, the national leader at 0.83 aces per set to begin the day, was held without one by the Tritons, and instead was saddled with four service errors.
UC San Diego continues a busy week at home against fifth-ranked Hawai’i this Friday night, Feb. 10. First serve at RIMAC Arena in La Jolla is set for 7 p.m.
Triton Notes: UCSD’s season-best .516 attack percentage was its highest since hitting .554 in a home sweep of UC Merced on April 5, 2014 … It is also the Tritons’ best in an MPSF match in quite some time, at least going back through 2001, and perhaps in their 25-year MPSF history … In fact, UCSD has hit above .500 just one other time since 2001, that a .518 clip in a home sweep of Princeton on Jan. 27, 2010 … UCSD has won two straight MPSF matches for the first time since March 30-31, 2012 … Tonight marked the Tritons’ first MPSF sweep since another 3-0 home decision over Pacific on April 11, 2014 … UCSD matched its season high with eight service aces, and did not allow an ace by its opponent for the second time in 2017 … The Tritons had dropped eight in a row to CSUN since a 3-1 triumph in Northridge on March 16, 2012 … It was unclear at press time, when UCSD had last topped the Matadors in La Jolla, but it had not occurred going back through 1989.
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